The Politicians Are Taking Away Our Light, so We Should Make Them Feel the Heat

I’ve already commented here and here on the government forcing us to use inferior lightbulbs.

The bad news is becoming worse news. Here’s a story from England that was linked on Instapundit, showing how big business (which conspired with the politicians to get rid of high-quality incandescent bulbs) will now reap a windfall selling the new CFL bulbs at much higher prices. Here’s an excerpt from the Daily Mail.

The price of energy-saving light bulbs will treble as the final supplies of traditional bulbs dry up, industry experts have warned. The Government has ordered energy companies to scrap the subsidies that have kept the price of eco-bulbs artificially low for the last few years. At the same time, manufacturers are increasing wholesale prices to take advantage of the European ban on ‘energy guzzling’ old-style bulbs. Retailers also claim bulbs that currently cost only 33p are expected to sell for more than £1 within three months. Some will cost £3 or more. The move comes as Britain is gearing up to phase out the last incandescent light bulbs in an effort to meet climate change targets. The EU has already banned shops from buying stocks of 100watt bulbs and stopped them stocking up on any type of frosted incandescent bulbs.

The only silver lining to this dark cloud is that (at least I don’t think) CFLs are not subsidized in the United States. So while it is likely that prices will increase once there no longer is competition from incandescent bulbs, hopefully American consumers will not face the same big price hikes as their British cousins.

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You might also point out that while incandescent bulbs have been manufactured in plants throughout the U.S., CFLs are manufactured in communist China, probably because OSHA would not allow the things to be made in the U.S. So where’s Nancy Pelosi on the exporting of jobs overseas?

We’ve been stockpiling incandescents for a couple years now, ever since hearing about this idiotic law. I heard that Rep. Upton (R) is considering a repeal of the ban, so please contact your Congressmen and Senators and tell them GIVE US OUR INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS BACK!

If enough of us stand up and tell them what’s what, they’ll listen. They had the crap scared out of them with the Tea Party uprisings of 2009, and then the shellacking of 2010… wait till they get the beating of 2011!

I’ve been buying a few extra packs of incandescents every time I go to Lowes or Home Depot or Walmart. Have hundreds now. Some day I can be an underground lightbulb kingpin. But I won’t mind if they repeal the ban. Writing a booklet on beating the slow drip shower head is my next project. They will never stop my hot blasting morning shower!

I just got tired of changing light bulbs all the time so I converted the entire house one weekend a year and a half ago. Haven’t changed a light bulb since. The difference is that it was *my* choice to do so.

I supposedly save a lot of money, but since we also run the a/c at 70 degrees or less year round, it is hard to tell. 😉

Another cost factor arises from the lost heat of incandescents – it will cost significantly more to heat homes lit by CFLs. With gas prices rising, the electricity savings is overwhelmed by the additional heating cost.

I hate the ugly light and industrial look of CFLs – I would never buy them.

I love the look of halogens and will replace all my reflector bulbs with them given time. They are about double the efficiency of incandescents and you should consider them if you like a modern decor style. They don’t fit well in traditional home settings.

I like the more modern LEDs and they can be made dimmable and at whatever color temperature you want, which solves a lot of the problems with CFLs for me. But they are mind-bendingly expensive, around $40-50 per incandescent reflector flood replacement. One problem with LEDs is that they look unusual. They fit perfectly into high-tech decor and do great as a replacement for halogens but they may not be well suited for more traditional lighting looks.

Unless you heat your home by electricity, electric lighting is going to be a less efficient heat source than your furnace. LED lights run cool and that is better for people like me who live in warmer climates where air conditioning is the highest expense. A 60 watt incandescent light can be replaced by about a 10-12 watt LED, which is huge energy savings.

I don’t think we have a really good solution yet for traditional chandeliers or other places where the bulb is visible and a traditional look desirable. Eventually I think LEDs will be created that will look better and be cheap enough to use. They also last forever. Already LED Christmas Lights are looking pretty good. You can have a whole big string of 80 large bulbs using only 12 watts, and they still look great.

Bought a few of these damn CFL’s 18 months ago and several of them have ALREADY burnt out. Bought a yellow “bug-lite” cfl 6 mo ago and it’s already gone. Personal experience is not proving the value of these things…oh, wait, it was forced on us by Reid & Pelosi OF COURSE it’s of NO VALUE!!!

The good and bad about compact fluorescent lights. Why the ads are both true and false. How to save and waste money on CFL’s.

My research indicated that the average CFL at that time will turn on 2000 times before its electronics fail. The recommendation to leave them on for 15 minutes is a crazy interpretation of that fact. Leaving them on doesn’t heal them. But, hey, at least if you leave them on for 15 minutes each time, you will get 500 hours use out of them before they fail. If you leave them on for 5+ hours at a time, then you will probably get the full 8000 or 10000 hour rated life.

Interesting to me, people who report on current CFL’s omit definite information about how many on-off cycles current bulbs will complete. Consumer Reports gives a Good-Bad rating for this, but not an absolute figure. This still seem to be a problem.

I also present a cost analysis of expected savings, taking into account CFL and standard bulbs release of heat energy, under air conditioning, winter heating, and no heating or cooling needed.

The heatball is an electric heating unit, which conveniently fits into a standard light-bulb socket. About 90% of the energy flowing into the heatball (100 watts standard) is converted into heat. That’s great efficiency! The remaining 10% is converted into visible light. This is a handy indicator, telling you that the unit is functioning properly.

Has anybody actually noticed that you CAN’T THROW CFLs AWAY? What are you supposed to do with these toxic baby-killers? Go to the EPA website, and realize with horror what you have to do if one of these eye-irritating mockeries of light should break: you practically have to declare your house a SuperFund cleanup site! THIS is environmentalism???? Mercury?!

I’d heard that you are supposed to recycle the little curlycues, so I took mine with me one day to the Pickens County Recycling Center, where we take old furniture, metal, etc. What did they tell me to do with the CFLs? You might well ask.
“Throw them into the compactor.”
Yeah, that’ll save the environment.

In Canada we put our used/broken mercury bulbs in a box with no return address and mail them to our favorite environmental advocate, organization or “green” politician. They want these things so bad. let them clean ’em up.

I somehow doubt that any but the most pedantic or OCD people are going to leave their windows open and HVAC off for “several hours” in the middle of the winter, or the heat of the summer, just because they broke a light bulb.